Shein’s Gen Z beauty play, suffice it to say, is paying off. 

While the Chinese retailer has long made headlines — first, for shaking up the fast-fashion game with its ultra-low prices and rapid churn of new designs and, most recently, for its ongoing IPO preparations — Shein has also been growing its beauty business, Sheglam, to much less fanfare. 

Founded in 2019 by Sylvia Fu, former assistant to Shein founder Chris Xu, Sheglam has swiftly become a formidable player in the global beauty game. It debuted with a $6 Color Bloom Liquid Blush — just months before Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty introduced one of its own to similar, long-lasting success — and has steadily built out a range of viral, affordable makeup products since, also branching into hair care last year. 

According to a source with knowledge of the matter, Sheglam’s net sales reached $400 million in 2024, up 60 percent versus the year prior. In turn, parent company Shein ranked number 81 on the WWD Beauty Inc Top 100 list of global beauty manufacturers for the year, outpacing players like Maesa, Weleda, Kering Beauté and Parlux in sales. 

Data from CreatorIQ shows that Sheglam is also a top-40 cosmetics brand by earned media value, having garnered $89.9 million EMV during the first half of 2025, driven largely by creator content on TikTok including tutorials, product roundups and try-on videos. 

With a fast-growing global retail footprint and category ambitions that go beyond its core cosmetics business, Sheglam is just getting started, said Fu, who is also chief executive officer of the brand, in her first U.S. press interview with WWD. 

“We were lucky in the sense that our first product easily went viral on TikTok,” said Fu, adding that a decision then to focus a majority of Sheglam’s marketing efforts toward growing its presence on TikTok, where the brand now counts 9.8 million followers, has played a key role in Sheglam’s success. 

“We design products, from the very beginning, that will be suitable for future TikTok marketing. It’s much easier to make the right content if you have the right product, and if you make the right content, everyone who uses your products will know how to present them — you will be able to more organically go viral.” 

The Color Bloom Liquid Blush remains Sheglam’s hero product, and the brand has added liquid contour and highlighter iterations to further its momentum in the category.

Gen Z has been the brand’s core shopper from Day One, Fu said. “Cheek, priming and setting products are still our largest categories. We intentionally chose those to start rather than foundation, mascara and lip, which giants like L’Oréal have been more focused on.”

It was six months into her tenure as Xu’s assistant at Shein when Fu proposed the launch of Sheglam. 

“I witnessed the boom of Chinese and Korean beauty brands and sort of proposed to [Xu], ‘why don’t we leverage Shein’s massive consumer base and platform to build another disruptive brand in makeup?,’” said Fu, who previously worked at a venture capital firm in China focused on the consumer goods sector. 

Initially, Sheglam products were sold solely on the Shein website before a stand-alone Sheglam website was launched in 2020. The brand then debuted on Amazon in 2022, and in 2023 embarked on its in-store retail footprint, which is the “largest growth engine for Sheglam now,” Fu said. 

“We expanded to the Middle East and Latin America first, because when we were only operating online, we found that we had more brand awareness in those regions.”

Today, Sheglam is available in more than 900 stores across six gulf countries in the Middle East, including Watson’s and Lifestyle at Centrepoint. According to Euromonitor, Sheglam was the single fastest-growing mass beauty and personal care brand in Saudi Arabia in 2024, and Fu reports that 25 percent of consumers who shop Sheglam at Lifestyle at Centrepoint have been net-new shoppers for the retailer. 

In Japan, the brand sells in more than 6,000 doors at stores such as Donki and Plaza. In Columbia, Mexico and India, Sheglam sells in another roughly 200 doors at retailers like Aruma, Liverpool and Tira, respectively. Like Shein, Sheglam does not sell in China, where Shein was founded. 

The U.S., where Sheglam only sells online, however, remains the brand’s key market.

“We pour most of our efforts into analyzing consumer needs in the U.S.,” Fu said. “It is the most competitive market, and it is the market where Sheglam must try its best to do well — we’ve basically developed our portfolio and creative strategy based on U.S. trends and consumer needs.”

While Fu declined to comment on whether the brand is expanding into U.S. retail soon, she said the brand is “working now to expand to more well-established markets,” with launches planned “this year and next.” The beauty brand has a staff of 300 people globally, and operates offices in China, Singapore, Los Angeles, Dubai, Milan, Tokyo, Berlin, Mexico City and Melbourne, some of which are markets Fu hinted Sheglam will soon expand into retail.

The apparel business of the brand’s parent company, Shein, by comparison, is strictly online, barring the occasional pop-up. 

“Sheglam is a brand that was born amidst much criticism, because many consumers connect the image of Sheglam with Shein,” said Fu, referencing the widespread critiques of Shein’s sustainability and human labor practices. In 2024, Shein reported two cases of child labor in its supply chain, adding that it “suspended orders” from the contract manufacturers in question until “remediation steps, including terminating contracts with underage employees” were taken. 

Shein, founded in 2012, has also faced mounting pressure to reduce its environmental impact, with its 2024 Sustainability Report demonstrating that the company’s total emissions rose 23.1 percent versus 2023 to more than 26 million metric tons of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).

Sheglam has, however, taken steps to distance itself from the contentious image of its parent company as it looks to rise through the ranks of beauty.

For one, Sheglam’s supply chain was built “completely from scratch,” said Fu, adding that there is no crossover between Shein’s manufacturers and those used by Sheglam, which are “totally independent manufacturers used by most other top players in the beauty industry.” 

“Our product development, supply chain, quality control, marketing and e-commerce operations, and [retail] operations are run quite independently at Sheglam,” Fu said.

Sheglam sources beauty ingredients from China, Italy, Japan and South Korea, among other regions. Most of its packaging is made in China, and though Fu declined to comment on how Trump’s tariffs are impacting the Sheglam business, she said the environment “is challenging for us,” and the brand “will continue to focus on keeping our products as accessible as possible, without compromising on quality, regardless of the trading environment.”

Sheglam introduces between 10 to 15 core products each year, as well as an additional seven or eight limited-edition collections. These limited-edition collections comprise roughly 10 to 15 percent of the brand’s total business, and include IP collaborations with brands like Harry Potter and the Twilight Saga, as well as original themed drops like its Chroma Zone and Crimson Butterfly collections. 

Expanding Sheglam’s hair range, which includes hot tools priced between $29 and $60 and hair care and styling products ranging from $3 for a tube of scalp serum to $11 for heat protectant, is a key priority for the brand over the next year. 

“Our range now is limited, but we’re looking to build our community for hair care and styling  — we have many hair launches in our pipeline,” said Fu, adding that Sheglam will also “expand to larger cosmetics categories including mascara, foundation and lip.” 

“Localization, and understanding the local consumer’s needs for products, content, and patterns of shopping, will be our next big priority, as well,” Fu said.